The Wire: Boston Edition

The Boston Police Department issued a press release today indicating that twenty-three people will be charged for crack and cocaine distribution in the Bromley-Heath housing development in Jamaica Plain. In season one of The Wire it was Avon Barksdale working for control of The Towers – its season four now and the lines are still tapped in hopes of shutting down Marlo Stanfield's operation. The fiction of HBO's drama is well developed and revolves around crack distribution in a public housing project. Today's announcement from the BPD is a first step in stopping the distribution networks – but if TV rings true (because it always does, right?) it will only be a small step in stopping crack from making it to Boston's streets.

The penalties are severe for dealing drugs in or near public housing projects, and are even stronger when minors are involved. Both the Boston Housing Authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has the right to evaluate the families of all the defendants and recommend offenders to the Housing Court for eviction. So where do they go if they're kicked out of Bromley-Heath? Good question, and its unclear if there is an answer, though pretty clear there is no good answer. In fact, recent reports from the Globe indicate that affordable housing in new developments in Boston haven't been as affordable as they should be. Developers are limited to a 20% profit margin on units marked for affordable housing. The Globe reports that there are rampant violations of this law. This means that the push for integration and increased housing options for the poor are limited while profits are high for developers.

There aren't many details on how the distribution ring was infiltrated. The FBI, the US Attorney's office, and local officials were all involved in bringing the charges against the long list of defendants. The big announcement is sure to shake things up – but it might not really take hold on solving some of the systemic problems that plague housing developments like Bromley-Heath.

It was an announcement of charges being brought against people, and not a huge drug bust. That means we had to scrounge up a DEA image of cocaine (though we thought about using this more irrelevant image) instead of smiling cops in front of a pile of seized loot.